My US yarn trip

When I knew I'd be going to the US I got really excited about the possibility of getting some of the fancy yarn I've read about on blogs. I was a bit worried that I wouldn't have a chance to go to any yarn shops since I was traveling with three others (although my mom is a knitter and understands). But I needn't have worried, I managed to visit quite a bit of shops and it was surely strange how often our hotel happened to be within walking distance of a yarn shop. A coincidence or divine intervention?

While I was in Berkeley I met up with Sonja (and her cutie Ása Sóley) for a yarn crawl which started in Oakland and ended in Alameda without a single skein of yarn bought! The reason? It was monday, and apparently yarn shops keep closed on mondays. After coffee at Peet's we ended up in Beverly's (acrylic heaven) where I got some US size needles (on the agenda): no. 1 (2.25 mm) in bamboo, and no. 2 (2.75 mm) and 3 (3.25 mm) in faintly colored metal – very pretty!

The following day I hit the road with my fellow travelers (a.k.a. family). After a night in Napa Valley, we stayed in a beautiful place called the city of Mt. Shasta. The town is at the roots of Mount Shasta and until I found out that the mountain is in fact an active volcano, I seriously considered moving there. Mt. Shasta has a yarn shop and of course I checked it out. Before the trip I laid out a plan. I was only allowed to buy yarn which I absolutely cannot get over here, and in addition I would stick to sock yarn. Fancy, hand-dyed/hand-painted sock yarn. And needles. And stitch markers (which are surprisingly difficult to find here). Oh, and Kool-Aid, although my fabulous sockapal took care of that for me. And zip-loc bags.

In the Mt. Shasta yarn shop, Weston Quilting & Crafts, most of the sock yarn was German (which turned out to be the case for many of the shops I visited). Since I can get that here, I was feeling a bit disappointed, until I spotted a single hank of hand-painted Opal which luckily happened to be in colors I like. Even though looking at the price tag made me gulp, I thought what the heck, it's a souvenir and maybe I won't find another yarn shop ever again in the US! (Boy was I wrong.) I also got some rubber stitch markers.

After Mt. Shasta we drove like the wind through Oregon and Washington, and reached Seattle. I went to three yarn stores there. The first one was Stitches which had very little of interest to me as it was more of a fabric store. I then went to So Much Yarn and spent ages touching every single skein in the shop. They didn't have too much sock yarn (and a lot of it was German), but in the end I grabbed a hank of Mountain Colors in very pretty greens.

While downtown, I also went to Barnes and Noble and got Handknit Holidays by Melanie Falick. The best yarn store was, funny enough, 300 m (330 yards – a skeins distance) from our hotel in the University district, Weaving Works. I ditched a sightseeing tour of Seattle's underground just to have enough time to spend in the shop. It sure paid off both for me and the shop owner(s). I got some Koigu, another hank of Mountain Colors in very pretty reds, a bunch of knitting needles, many of which I already own but these were shiny metal ones. Here all the Inox/Prym needles are boring grey. In addition I bought Knitting on the Road by Nancy Bush aaaaand: a ball winder! It is the coolest thing ever I tell you.

After Seattle we again drove like the wind through Washington and Oregon staying for a night in Grants Pass. We then hit the winding (scary) road down to the California coast. We had lunch in Garberville where I found some really cool sock needles in shiny colored metal, oh so pretty! The shop was probably called In Stitches and the sales lady was really friendly.

The last night of the trip we stayed in Mendocino and again there was a yarn shop about 200 m (220 yards) from the hotel (not quite as lucky a coincidence as in Seattle since in Mendocino it would be very difficult not to be within walking distance from a yarn shop assuming there was a yarn shop in town). In the Mendocino Yarn Shop there was some Koigu, but unfortunately only one skein of each color and since that's not enough for a pair of socks I had to pass. After spending a good amount of time looking at and touching the yarn, I came out with two hanks of Manos del Uruguay in a nice orange color.

When we were back in Berkeley I walked for about 15-20 minutes to get to Lacis (again, reasonable walking distance from the hotel!). It turned out that they don't sell much yarn, but the very nice sales lady told me they had a fine collection of needles in small sizes, as well as non-mainstream knitting books. I was so captivated by the extremely tiny needles they had, that I simply had to buy these 1 mm (US 00000) ones although I might never use them.

They had even smaller ones, both 0.75 mm (US 000000) and 0.5 mm (US 0000000) but at $5 per pack I thought that perhaps 1 mm is enough of a funny thing. It was true what the sales lady had said about the book collection. They had quite a bit of books that I've never seen. I couldn't control myself and ended up buying four books: Folk Knitting in Estonia by Nancy Bush, Designing Knitwear by Deborah Newton (a bit in the painfully 80's style, but I guess the info is still useable), Knitting: 19th Century Sources published by Lacis (for a list of their books click here) and The Art of Knitting 1892 which is a facsimile reproduction of an 1892 knitting book. Boy did they use small needles back in the days! And why, oh why, didn't I buy all the itty bitty needles at Lacis? Here are all the books I bought in the trip

And shall we have one more look at all the pretty yarn?

My favorite is the red Mountain Colors. And just to finally eat up all of your bandwidth, here are the needle sizes I got:

All in all I'm really happy with my purchases. Maybe a bit too happy, because now I feel like the yarns are so precious that I'll never want to use them.